Senate Passes Highway Bill, Leaving Next Move to House

The Chicago Skyway was purchased by Cintra in 2005. Illinois, Indiana, and Colorado are the three states directly affected by the amendment, according to Senator Jeff Bingaman’s office. Photo: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images

March 14 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Senate passed a two-year,
$109 billion surface-transportation bill as states began to
assess the impact of a provision that penalizes them for hiring
companies to run highways.

The focus on the highway and transit package, which both
parties framed as necessary for job creation, now returns to the
House.

Speaker John Boehner has said the House may work from the
Senate bill, which passed 74-22, if enough Republicans can’t be
persuaded to support a reworked version of a five-year, $260
billion bill proposed by Representative John Mica, a Florida
Republican.

“Presidents, Republicans and Democrats have always said
you can’t have a thriving economy if you can’t move goods and
you can’t move people, and you can’t do it efficiently,”
Senator Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who is chairman
of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said after the
vote.

The current law authorizing transportation programs expires
March 31.

Senators voted down most efforts to modify the bill,
including several that Boxer said would gut the U.S.
government’s role in financing and planning a national road
network.

Bingaman Amendment

One exception was an amendment by Senator Jeff Bingaman, a
New Mexico Democrat, to discourage states from leasing roads to
private operators. The amendment, which passed 50-47, added to
language already in the bill that would limit tax breaks for
companies such as Macquarie Infrastructure Co. that operate
highways for states.

Bingaman’s amendment excludes privately operated toll roads
from the formula that calculates U.S. highway aid to states.
Those proposals counter other parts of the bill and President
Barack Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget that encourage states to
attract investment in infrastructure.

“This will hinder and constrain our ability to be
innovative,” Steve Faulkner, spokesman for the Ohio Department
of Transportation, said in a telephone interview.

Officials in Ohio, who are studying whether to lease
operation of the state’s turnpike, are “adamantly opposed” to
the amendment, Faulkner said. He declined to say what impact it
may have on specific projects.

Tolls Backed

Indiana, Illinois and Colorado are the three states
directly affected by the amendment, according to Bingaman’s
office. States without private roads would get more U.S. highway
money.

Indiana in 2006 leased its turnpike for 75 years to Cintra,
a unit of Madrid-based Ferrovial SA, and Sydney-based Macquarie
Infrastructure, in the largest U.S. public-private road lease
deal to date.

Lawmakers and Obama are looking to companies and investors
to help pay for toll roads and other projects as the Highway
Trust Fund, which pays for infrastructure from U.S. fuel taxes,
faces insolvency as soon as October.

The Bingaman amendment was backed by the American Trucking
Associations and AAA, the former American Automobile
Association. It was opposed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the
largest business lobbying group, and the American Road and
Transportation Builders Association, a construction trade group.

“At a time when all levels of government are under
increasing budgetary pressures, we should be incentivizing
states who seek to leverage their limited resources,” ARTBA
President Peter Ruane said in a letter to senators March 12.

The most recent surface-transportation legislation, which
was passed in 2005, allocated about $286 billion over six years.
Highway programs have operated on eight short-term extensions at
about the same spending level since 2009, when the bill was set
to expire.

The White House budget released earlier in February that
proposed $476 billion over six years on surface transportation,
with an immediate $50 billion this year.